REBORN My Second Life I Became The Villianess (Nyxara) novel Chapter 12

Before I could even scream at him again, his hand shot out fast as hell. His fingers locked tight around the back of my neck, gripping hard enough that I couldn’t pull away. He yanked me across the leather seat and crashed his mouth against mine. 

The second I gasped, he was all over me, his tongue shoving deep, kissing me like he was trying to own me. It was messy, aggressive, and filthy. He bit my lip, sucked on it, then fucked my mouth with his tongue, growling low while he took what he wanted. 

My hands pushed at his chest, but he didn’t budge. He just pinned my wrist down hard against the seat and kept devouring me, wet and rough, like he couldn’t get enough. 

When he finally pulled back, he didn’t let go. His fingers stayed tangled in my hair, thumb pressed against my racing pulse. He stared at me, breathing heavy, eyes dark with satisfaction. 

“Just like as I imagined,” he muttered, voice low and rough. 

I wrenched myself backward, ripping my head from his grip, and scrambled across the seat until my shoulder was pressed hard against the opposite door. I glared at him, breathing heavily, my chest rising and falling beneath the sharp lines of my black suit jacket. 

On the inside, my mind was absolute chaos. 

I was pissed off, furious that he had bypassed every boundary I set. I was horrified by how easily he had overpowered me. But underneath the anger and the shock, a hot, traitorous jolt of arousal was burning low in my veins, and it terrified me. Most of all, I was confused. 

In my last life, I had only ever laid eyes on Dario Valteri twice, and both times were from a distance, I had been standing awkwardly in the corner of a crowded ballroom while he ignored everyone around him. I had never spoken a single word to him. So why, in this life, was he tearing through my carefully constructed walls and invading my space like he had a right to my air? 

I hugged my arms tight across my chest, shooting him one last venomous glare out from under my lashes, while the car sped down the highway toward a city that suddenly felt a lot smaller than it used to. 

The tinted windows of the car blurred the morning traffic into streaks of gray and silver as my mind ran a mile a minute, the engine’s low hum vibrating straight through the leather seat. 

My hands were clenched so tight in my lap that my knuckles ached. None of this made sense. This wasn’t how my past life had gone. The entire timeline had fractured, splintering off into jagged, unpredictable pieces, and I couldn’t figure out where the gears had slipped. 

When the car finally pulled up in front of the sleek, glass-and-steel monolith of Cipher Core, I practically bolted out before the driver could even step around to help. I bypassed the main lobby, swiped my private security card into the executive elevator, and shot straight up to the top floor. 

The second the heavy glass doors of my private office slid shut behind me, I locked them. I tossed my briefcase onto the desk, sank into my ergonomic leather chair, grabbed a tablet, and started aggressively pulling up a digital ledger. I needed data, I needed to map out every single discrepancy between the life I remembered dying in and the reality I was currently breathing in. 

I began typing out a list of everything that had fundamentally changed. 

The Welcome Home: In my last life, the very day I returned to the Vexari estate, Nysa had hurled a heavy crystal tumbler straight at my head, splitting my scalp open and leaving me bleeding on the foyer floor. This life? I had side-stepped it with inches to spare, leaving her staring at shattered glass while I walked away untouched. 

In my last life, Dario never showed up at the estate beforehand, and he certainly hadn’t intercepted me. This life? He had walked right through those front doors. 

The Charity Gala: In my last life, I had attended that miserable gala wearing a hideous, gaudy dress chosen specifically to humiliate me, forced to cower alone in a dark corner. Nysa had hunted me down in the washroom, cornering me and beating me until I was huddled on the cold tile floor, crying and begging for it to stop. 

This life? I walked in wearing midnight-blue silk, commanding the room’s attention, and when Nysa tried to corner me in the washroom, I turned the tables, slammed her into the mirror, and left her shaking. 

The Interaction with Dario: In my last life, I never spoke a single word to Dario Valteri. I was a ghost to him. This life? He cornered me on the balcony, looked right through my facade, and told me the marriage could be mine. 

He gave a small, approving nod, shifting comfortably against the cushions. “I remembered Dario dropped you off this morning, and figured you wouldn’t have a ride back to the estate. Thought I’d save you the trouble.” 

“Thank you,” I repeated, genuinely taken aback. 

As the car pulled away from the curb and merged into the evening traffic, my mind began racing again, untangling the complex web of my past life versus this new, fractured reality. 

In my last life, my father hadn’t been physically abusive toward me. He wasn’t a monster; he was simply a cold, distant ghost of a man who treated me like a piece of background furniture. He never raised a hand and never yelled at me, the actual venom, the psychological torture, and the physical blows had always come exclusively from my mother and Nysa. 

Sitting here in the quiet car next to him, I weighed the variables. If my father was actually paying attention now, if he was capable of showing a basic shred of paternal consideration, then maybe he wasn’t completely irredeemable. Maybe, just maybe, he didn’t deserve to be utterly destroyed when I brought the Vexari empire down. 

I could potentially spare him, isolating my vengeance solely for the two harpies waiting for us at home, but only time would tell if he was worth saving. 

When the car finally swept up the long driveway of the Vexari estate and parked by the grand entrance, the heavy front doors swung open before my hand could even touch the handle. 

The head butler stood waiting in the foyer, looking harried. “Mr. Vexari,” he announced urgently as my father stepped out of the car. 

“There is an urgent, high-priority international call waiting for you in your study regarding the overseas holdings.” 

My father frowned, checking his watch. “Alright. Hold all other calls, I’ll take it in my private line.” He said as he hurried down the hall toward his study, completely distracted.